Tawny Lees, M.B.A., is an Executive Leadership Coach and the COO of Mariposa Leadership
In addition to coaching, she leads our team, ensures client satisfaction, and is a coach/client matchmaker extraordinaire. Tawny’s coaching career began in 2004, inspired and informed by over 18 years of corporate leadership experience. She held VP roles in the financial industry in functions as diverse as Risk, Sales, Service, Operations, Change Management and Marketing. A quick learner, strong collaborator, and adept leader, she was known for being able to build functional organizations from the ground up and quickly turn around struggling ones. Despite literally growing up in crazy-paced organizations, Tawny maintained a pragmatic and grounded perspective on leadership.
Approach + Specialties
- Define their vision and aspirations for themselves as leaders.
- Assess their “current state” of leadership and design a roadmap to improve specific leadership behaviors in areas such as relationship building, influencing, coaching, making decisions, delegating, and thinking strategically.
- Explore their perspectives/thinking to achieve greater satisfaction and impact.
- Take control of their time and energy to overcome “overwhelm,” becoming more productive and less stressed.
Clients
Tawny has coached Directors to C-Suite leaders at companies such as AppFolio, Avantus, Bill.com, FreshWorks, Athleta, Archer, Google Ventures, Honor, Instacart, Meta, Sofinnova Ventures, Tapestry, PayPal, and Zynga. Sample engagements include:
- Chief Financial Officer of a post-IPO technology company scaled her functional teams and aligned C-suite colleagues on priorities and structure for the rapidly growing organization. Moved from being a brilliant IC to bringing out the best in others and influencing more effectively.
- Chief Digital Officer of a large retail company became more effective at influence and harnessing the talent on his team in order to create a culture of innovation.
- Chief Operating Officer of a growing tech company navigated complex and difficult relationships and uncertainty to steer the company through a period of significant change.
Education + Certifications
- M.B.A., Haas School of Business, UC Berkeley
- B.S., Finance with Economics minor at California State University, Hayward, cum laude
- Coaching: Certified organizational coach by John F. Kennedy University and many ongoing trainings with the Enneagram and other coaching modalities to keep her fresh.
Warm
Candid
Savvy
Clients appreciate Tawny’s ability to connect with them quickly and deeply and be both a supporter and challenger. On the personal front — she has three kids from college-aged to adults and considers herself a recovering workaholic — so she understands what it means to juggle it all. Being a new “free-flyer” (not “empty-nester”) she’s on a rampage to travel even more and spend more time floating on the water and down the slopes in Lake Tahoe. Always striving to have a positive impact in her community, she’s involved in several organizations focused on helping youth thrive.
Whether it was updating process, figuring out how I could contribute best, fixing broken teams, influencing management or just staying sane, Tawny always had the right direction when I was lost and helped me keep the engineering needle just under the red zone.